A garden for all seasons at Macon home

When Stephen Reichert’s parents moved to more manageable quarters in 2004, he purchased the house where he spent his childhood growing up with his brothers, a charming cottage in Ingleside, designed for the Reicherts by Macon architect Bo MacEwen in 1939.

Although Stephen was not yet ready to retire from his position as a sales executive in the fabric industry in New York City, he did not waste any time planning some changes for the house and yard to accommodate its new owner.

Stephen’s mother, the late Chunk Reichert, who was admired for her impeccable taste, had updated the house over the years to make room for a growing family and, later, for her and her husband, the late Albert Reichert Sr., to enjoy a less frenetic lifestyle as empty nesters.

The back porch, designed with a shed roof and a stone floor by Delmar Warren in the mid-20th century, was later enclosed, with a fireplace by architect Shannon Fickling, who had Robert Zeigler build a new roof. The insulated windows, specially designed to adapt to temperature discrepancies between the interior and exterior, can be opened during the more pleasant months of the year.

One of the first people Stephen contacted after purchasing the house was landscape architect Wimberly Treadwell, to redesign the terraced back yard. Stephen’s mother relied on Adele George to select low maintenance shrubbery and to keep the landscape open from the patio, up the hill, to the stone fence.

“Mother did not want to have to clip anything or have to be out in the yard all the time,” Stephen remembers, “but I lived in a studio apartment in an old brownstone in New York, without even a window box, and couldn’t wait to work in the yard,” he said.

Treadwell’s design created a casual garden around the patio, close to the house, and a separate formal garden on the upper level, with additional plants and an English lattice fence, designed by Fickling, added to the low stone wall between the two areas. When guests are on the very private patio, which extends the length of the house, the formal design of the upper garden is obscured. However, stone steps and compacted stone paths are intriguing clues that there is more to be seen.

MORE THAN WINDOW BOXES

In 2008, Stephen moved back to Macon to continue his projects — on the house and in the garden — which have become fulltime avocations. He has tapped into the expertise of other landscape designers and artisans to create not just a garden, but an outdoor gallery experience.

His nephew John Reichert, a University of Georgia graduate in landscape architecture, is the renaissance man for outdoor spaces. He can interpret his uncle’s vision for a serene space that surprises the visitor with sculptural designs and water features that complement and enhance the lush surroundings.

The garden is entered through a moon gate designed by Fickling and built by John at the side of the house. Tucked into the shrubbery beside the walkway is a massive round stone that is actually a fountain, quietly setting the mood for what lies beyond the gate.

At one corner of the house is a hardly noticeable organic sculpture which, at first glance, could be a tall gourd or pod. Local sculptor Jim Bodell reproduced the piece for Stephen in burnished metal, based on “Bird in Space,” made by contemporary Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi in his studio in Italy in 1923.

The raised terraced area immediately behind the patio, once another garden bed, is now a long reflecting pool and pond that John built. It is also home to a school of healthy koi that scurry in and around the lily pads and bronze frogs anchored in the water. Centered in the dwarf mondo grass border is another of Bodell’s sculptures — a sundial replicated in miniature from the giant sundial in Oslo’s Vigeland Park.

Stephen combines generous clay pots of annuals with the permanent landscape, defining the approach as you enter the gates with the tart green foliage and coral blossoms of angel wing begonias.

Standing against a stone retaining wall is a potted Japanese pine tree, also called the umbrella pine because of its similarity in shape to an oversized bonsai tree, with bottle brush needles at the end of each limb. Stephen found it in Agape Nursery’s display at the garden shop on the grounds of Hay House during one of the May garden tours, brought it home and has left it to gracefully spread its limbs over some of the garden furniture.

Stephen’s redesigned garden has far exceeded his wishful thinking about window boxes when he was living high above the streets of New York.

DISCOVERING TREASURES IN THE SECRET GARDEN

Because the backyard receives too little sun to nourish a lawn, paths and steps meandering up the hill to the formal garden are surrounded by shade loving plants — including dark green and variegated hostas, which are resurrected in the spring. In a far corner of the upper level, completely shielded from view, is a dry well built by John from salvaged cobblestones, with a soaring, elaborate super structure, which would have been the lift if this was a working well, designed and fabricated by Atlanta artist Andrew Crawford.

The lawn extends the full length of the upper level of the garden. However, it is no longer a lawn, but a formally designed bed of dwarf mondo grass, intersected by crossing paths at the center where John fashioned a circle of crab orchard stone pieces. The path ends at a column holding a potted fern whose fronds billow like a fancy ball gown over the column to the ground — completely obscuring from view the secret garden behind it.

When Stephen discovered local clay artist Tanner Coleman and partner Alexis Gregg, founders of ANT Sculpture, he was impressed with the cultural influences in Coleman’s work, much of which is built for outside installations. He purchased Coleman’s Column I, made from carved bricks and clay shapes that reflect ancient archeological finds, and stands over 5 feet tall, with a recessed bird bath in the top, surrounded by a frieze band.

The texture of the imposing column is a counterpoint to the architectural precision of the English lattice fence that wraps the corner of the secret space.

Since this was the only area of the garden without any seating, Stephen commissioned Coleman to build a bench, taking the design for the bases from the gargoyle figures in the column. John completed the bench with a seat built from Brazilian Ipe wood, an almost indestructible material that is equally hard to use because of its impervious density — one of its commercial names is Ironwood — and, he rounded the edges of the bench seat to be in unison with the curved bases.

The plants are a reminder of the first garden planner, Stephen’s mother, and her selections for a maintenance-free yard. Young camellia sasanquas have been planted against the original wall of the secret garden, just a stone’s throw away from the very first ones, framing, and reflected in, the pond below.

With so many paths to explore and with such unique art work in the outdoor “gallery,” there is never a dormant season in the Reichert garden.

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "A garden for all seasons at Macon home."